We’ve talked about this sort of thing many many times before and I mean a lot and perhaps a whole lot more than a lot just search the archives and see but Megan Erickson discusses brain imaging studies and the brain of a woman in orgasm in her piece on Braingasm: How Porn “Shuts Down” Women’s Brains.
“Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets,” said Andy Warhol. It seems America agrees: adult entertainment is an estimated $10 billion dollar industry in the U.S., though the ethics of capturing and manufacturing sexual desire on screen have been debated for decades. Criticisms abound, ranging in tone and degree of plausibility from you’ll go blind! to larger questions of whether watching porn is linked to violent behavior, sexism, or a lack of self-actualization. (“He’s just not that into anyone,” quipped a New York Magazine article on the supposedly low libido of the Internet generation).
But what really goes on in a brain-on-porn? In a recent study conducted at the University of Groningen Medical Center performed PET scans on the brains of 12 pre-menopausal women, measuring differences in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the primary visual cortex as the women watched three videos. One video was a documentary on Caribbean marine life, and the other two were “women-friendly” porn films depicting foreplay, manual stimulation, oral sex, and vaginal intercourse.
The researchers found that viewing pornography lead to a decrease in the amount of blood sent to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what happens when we watch television or read a blog. Unlike with the blog or the TV show, the brain doesn’t take in all of the visual details of a sex scene, and the more explicit the video, the less blood is sent to the visual cortex. (Looks like there’s something to the “you’ll go blind” threat, afterall.)
The researchers surmised that the blood was diverted to regions of the brain involved in sexual arousal. “You have to realize that the brain wants to spare as much energy as possible, so if some part of the brain is not necessary at a high level of functioning, it immediately goes down,” uroneurologist Gert Holstege told LiveScience.
The conclusions of the study deepen Holstege’s claim that humans can either be turned on or afraid, but not both. “If you want to have sex, as a man, you need to produce a safe situation for the woman,” he says. If anxiety kills your sex drive, does it follow that orgasms can relieve anxiety? A few studies have hinted that they do, though again, primarily in women.
What’s the Significance?
Just as interesting as the researchers’s conclusions are their methods. Why look at the brains of women in particular? Until recently, this was unheard of. As Beverly Whipple — the scientist known for “discovering” the G-Spot — told Big Think in 2009, women were not even included in such research until after 1993.
“Most of the research that was conducted in terms of human sexual responses was conducted in men and findings were extrapolated to women,” says Whipple. “We found out that that doesn’t work because women are different from men.” Whipple and her colleague, psychologist Barry Komisaruk, believe that men and women feel orgasms the same way, but there are some distinctions when it comes to the variety of sexual responses (women have more). For instance, many women have the unique ability to “think off,” or climax just by imagining sensory stimulation.
See a video and the rest of the story at http://bigthink.com/think-tank/porn-shuts-down-womens-brains and check out the products below to discover how to do thinking off type fun things and so very very much more.
Brian
www.BrianDavidPhillips.com
